Most critics land on the same point: the spectacle is the thing. Praise clusters on the scale of the production, the entry into Rome and the Battle of Actium most often named, and on Elizabeth Taylor, whom nearly every review treats as the reason to watch even where the film around her is found wanting. Several also credit Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s script for keeping four hours of history literate, and Variety and The New York Times admire how much scope he manages to hold together.
The reservations fall on the drama. The affair between Taylor and Richard Burton is called unconvincing more than once, the dialogue wordy or overblown, the narrative rambling. The spread is wide, from warm endorsements to outright dismissals. The New Yorker finds the film preposterous yet recommends it anyway for the pageantry, and Slant Magazine goes furthest, calling it banal rather than either a triumph or a fascinating catastrophe. Reviews of the 2013 restoration are as split as the 1963 ones.